“Don’t bring anything that you can’t live without.” Those words still haunt me. I must have told Erik that 20 or 30 times when he would ask me, “Are you bringing…." If it was something he was worried about losing, breaking or being stolen, I would always repeat that as a travel mantra. “Don’t bring anything you can’t live without."
Stuff is funny to me. I like to have stuff but am not sure where it falls on the “value” pyramid. I am also really good at making other people question the value of their stuff. For example, my girlfriend Heidi has a white rug in the house that she bought at Pottery Barn. (I accidentally went into Pottery Barn once before realizing where I was and scampered off) Anyway, there have been a few times where I have forgotten the rug is white or that it was expensive. Heidi might come home from work to find me working on my bike on the rug, usually with my shoes on. The conversation will go something like this. “What are you doing?”
I look at her with my “question face.” “What do you mean what am I doing? I am working on my bike. See all the tools… and the bike.”
That is followed with a, “Do you have to do it on the white rug?”
To which I reply, “Well the rug is in the TV room…where the TV is...and I thought I would watch TV while working on my bike.”
I already know where this conversation is going and so does she. She will remind me that the rug was expensive and she had her eye on it for a long time before buying it AND she bought it at Pottery Barn (which like I said, does not carry a lot of weight with me. It just confuses me more. Like why would a store with Barn and Pottery in the name sell expensive rugs? ). This is the point in the conversation where I bust out the “guilty stuff talk.”
Heidi, it’s just a rug. It is just stuff. Why do we have rugs that we can’t walk on? Doesn’t that seem insane or what rich snobby people do? What is the point of having a white rug if you can’t take your bike apart on it?
It’s as easy as that, and works with anything you can imagine. Suddenly the person who worked hard to save up and buy something nice is debating the value of stuff. She will wander away pondering her value pyramid and I will get to continue working on my bike. It’s basically my version of Jedi Mind Tricks.
This trip has brought the value of stuff to a whole new level. Suddenly, I'm faced with the same ponderment (which I don’t think is a word) that I often bestow on Heidi. In Colombia, while eating lunch, the van was broken into. The culprits pretty much cleaned us out of everything that was not bolted down. Every article of clothing I had was gone. All my fishing equipment, gone. My secret stash of money, gone. Cell phone, gone. iPod gone. Erik’s clothes, fishing equipment, guitar and tools were all taken as well.
They broke a window, popped a lock, and cleaned us out in an hour. We were parked in front of a church on a busy street in the middle of the day. I would have to estimate 50 people must have seen this happen in front of them.
When we strolled back to the car a lady was yelling at me in Spanish. She was talking so fast that I had no idea what she was saying and her two little kids were swirling around me like yapping dogs at my feet. I figured we either should not have been parked in front of the church or she wanted me to pay her kids for watching the car. Then she pointed to the broken window and I'm sure I looked like I was going to puke. In those types of situations I would have liked to think I would remain calm but I didn’t. I just kept swearing and asking someone to call the police. Right….the Colombian police are going to help us find our clothes. Not like they have to worry about FARC rebels or anything more important.
After a couple hours it set in that our stuff was gone and not coming back. We set out on the road, neither one of us saying anything but both wondering where to go from there. The thought of putting the car on a boat and flying home crossed my mind many times. It seemed like a valid excuse right? Sometimes you lose.
A day of driving, and not much talking, later Erik broke the silence and said, “It’s just stuff right?”
I nodded but I wanted to tell him that I might have well invented this Jedi Mind Trick and to shut up because I wanted to pout more. But I didn’t. I just said, “Yeah, it is just stuff." It was all my favorite stuff and at that point, the hurt still burned. Actually it froze, because I was now in Quito at 9,000 feet in shorts and a t-shirt. A day before I was set to break out my cold weather gear, it all disappeared.
Over the next few days, going home started to become less of an option until it was just a joke like, “Man when that first happened I just wanted to go home” and we would both laugh. The owner of our hotel in Quito took us shopping and I got laughed at by all the Ecuadorian shop owners when everything I tried on was 4 inches short. I finally found a sweatshirt that fit. Complete with fluorescent pink and blue skulls and turntables. Rad. Welcome back to 1987. Luckily, growing up in rural Colorado prepared me for this fashion style.
Slowly I built back up my collection of the basics. Socks, underwear, shirts, anything I could purchase I made sure was cheap and plain. If it happened again the person stealing my crap would get just that. Crap. I even bought a alpaca sweater complete with alpacas on it. Who in their right mind would steal that?The next few weeks we traveled through Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and into Chile. We had hit our stride again and on our last night in Chile we stopped in a ski town up in the Andes. It looked like it could have been a ski town in Colorado complete with expensive stores and Chilean elite. When we came out from dinner the van door was slightly open. We searched through the van and Erik said “one clothes bag is missing” Yep, my new clothes and my llama sweater was the only bag they took. Nothing else. I think my reaction was a different. Less shock, more of a “Really God? What lesson did I not learn the first time?” kind of feel.
That night we drove around looking at all the groups of teenagers that were out and about. Apparently my courage was a little stronger in a ritzy ski town then it was in an industrial town in Columbia. Either way, we didn’t see anything and I went to bed in the same shorts and t-shirt that I was wearing the first time I got robbed. I’m not sure if I should consider it my lucky shirt or my unlucky shirt.
I knew we had to return to town the next day for gas. For the first hour or two before I fell asleep, I envisioned seeing the person who stole my bag wearing my alpaca sweater, and I was willing to fight him for it. I'm not sure which part of that vision is crazier. That anyone would wear a sweater that they just stole or that I would be willing to dance for it.
So today I am without “stuff” again. Heidi will be down in a couple weeks and I am going to try to hold out with a few basics until the resupply team arrives. This should give me plenty of time to ponder my value of stuff. If the first couple of days become a trend I might be willing to back off my Jedi mind tricks when I get home. Stuff has its role just like everything else. The important part is the balance: having stuff that makes life better, but not living a better life through stuff. When I get home I will appreciate stuff a little more. Count on me removing my shoes before taking my bike apart on the white carpet.
